Can I add calls to my mail by adding a turn on HestiaCP?

bestman · November 5, 2025, 11:02pm

Hi everyone, I’m just dealing with delta chat due to increasing censorship in my country. I have posts on Hestia and delta chat functions perfectly on my mailbox, except for calls. I know that you can configure chatmail using Postfix SMTP and Dovecot IMAP, and Hestia uses Exim. So I just wonder if it’s possible to set up Hestia so that calls appear? Thanks

WofWca · November 6, 2025, 7:18am

See also Help testing upcoming Delta Chat release with calls 📞! - #47 by WofWca. Delta Chat is gonna include a default TURN server for non-Chatmail accounts, so most people don’t need to worry about this.

Delta Chat gets the TURN server string from the mail server’s IMAP metadata:

github.com/chatmail/core

src/imap.rs

997e8216b


      
          "/shared/vendor/deltachat/turn" => {
              if let Some(value) = m.value {
                  match create_ice_servers_from_metadata(context, &value).await {
                      Ok((parsed_timestamp, parsed_ice_servers)) => {
                          ice_servers_expiration_timestamp = parsed_timestamp;
                          ice_servers = Some(parsed_ice_servers);
                      }
                      Err(err) => {
                          warn!(context, "Failed to parse TURN server metadata: {err:#}.");
                      }
                  }
              }
          }

If you’re running a custom non-Chatmail server, I think you can add this field manually, I think it can still be a static string. Just make the username a timestamp that is super far in the future.

Here is how it’s obtained in Chatmail:

github.com/chatmail/relay

chatmaild/src/chatmaild/metadata.py

d42f57929


      
          elif keyname == "vendor/vendor.dovecot/pvt/server/vendor/deltachat/turn":
              res = turn_credentials()
              port = 3478
              return f"O{self.turn_hostname}:{port}:{res}\n"

github.com/chatmail/chatmail-turn

src/main.rs

7f7cc0c0f


      
          async fn socket_loop(path: &Path, shared_secret: &str) -> Result<()> {
              let listener = UnixListener::bind(path).context("Failed to bind Unix socket")?;
              loop {
                  match listener.accept().await {
                      Ok((mut stream, _addr)) => {
                          let duration = Duration::from_secs(5 * 24 * 3600);
                          let (username, password) = generate_long_term_credentials(shared_secret, duration)?;
          
                          // Write credentials to stdout.
                          // Newline indicates the end of the answer
                          // and allows the client to tell if the answer
                          // was truncated if the server is restarted 
                          // or crashed while writing the answer.
                          let res = format!("{username}:{password}\n");
                          stream.write_all(res.as_bytes()).await?;
                      }
                      Err(err) => {
                          eprintln!("Unix connection failed: {err}.");
                      }
                  }

This file has been truncated. show original

bestman · November 6, 2025, 12:04pm

Thank you, it’s still a bit difficult to figure out how to apply this to the HestiaCP installation, but I’ll think about it. In general, it would be good to use, as I already said, your turn, such as in matrix synapse or ejabberd. Just as I understand the file transfer is limited to 20-30 MB, which also offers to install GitHub - chatmail/relay: chatmail service deployment scripts and docs which doesn’t make sense to me, since I have both ejabberd, synapse, and hestiacp). But still, in my opinion, as a backup messenger delta chat is very good, thank you for doing it!